Though one of the more under-the-radar NBA players, Sacramento Kings’ Garrett Temple is one of the most respected and outspoken when it comes to important off-court issues.
One of the topics Temple has been most proactive in has been police violence and after the recent fatal shooting of Sacramento resident Stephon Clark, the Kings guard shared his views on the issue during a visit to Clark’s alma mater, Sacramento High School. Following from USAToday’s Sam Amick:
“First of all, let me say, I applaud (police officers) for what they do,” he began. “There’s always that devil’s advocate who says, ‘You don’t know what they go through daily, on a day to day basis. You don’t know how scared they are.’ And I said, ‘I don’t. I can’t imagine.’
“It takes a courageous person – individual – to do that. But with that said, there comes a level of responsibility, you know? And it’s not okay to be able to say, ‘Well I thought (he had a gun).’ When you make a mistake, that mistake is heightened. Your mistake – saying ‘gun’ when he didn’t have a gun, took his life. And that is a mistake that should not go without consequence, in my opinion.”
“This is something (where) we really, truly feel things need to change in this area. Hopefully people understand that.”
Stephon Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old African American male, was shot 20 times and killed by Sacramento police in his backyard after they mistook his cellphone for a gun. The shooting has caused a nationwide uproar as this is just the latest in a string of similar events over recent years which end with the same result.
Garrett Temple emphasized that without certain consequences put in place, these fatal police shootings of unarmed African-American men will continue to pile up.
“I personally do not think that each cop who has killed a black guy is racist,” he said. “I do not think that whatsoever. I honestly think the majority of them are not racist. I don’t think that they look at black people and say, ‘I want to kill you.’ I think it goes deeper in terms of how society and how America has portrayed black men – young black men, black and brown men – especially from the hood and that are in the hood and the stereotypes that they put on them that creates biases in people’s minds.
“The cop may think twice if he thinks, ‘Well, if I kill this guy, if I shoot this guy, and he’s unarmed, I may go to jail for 10 years, so my family may be without a father for 10 years.’…If you have a consequence, you will make sure this person has a gun before you take his life, before you shoot. And I think until we have those consequences, or we hold people accountable for that, it’s going to continue to happen.”
